We've created a monster

We’ve created a monster

Once again I apologise for not being in communication as much as I had initially set out to be in my original post. 

Things have been a bit nuts for me lately with a whole bunch of commercials all coming in at once before Christmas.  Then on top of that I’ve been I pre production for two jobs, “The Sellers” (which we are shooting 5D anamorphic on) and another short film “Night Storm” for which I am currently sitting on a plane bound for my hometown Wellington, in order to start shooting tomorrow afternoon.

This has certainly been a massive learning curve for me and everyone involved. Olli my camera assistant has been pretty much living in the test bay at Panavision here in Sydney for the past week.  I believe one of the guys there said that he had “become part of the furniture.”

All the guys at “Heckler” in Sydney have been working hard at getting us all on the same page with post pathway as well as devising the best  “compressor droplets” for cropping and pro res conversion.   The compressor droplets are necessary because we have to cut off or crop in on the left and right hand sides in order to keep a true 1:2.40 widescreen ratio, otherwise we would be left with a long and skinny image that resembles more a ratio more likened to 3:1.

We are also now working with Dave Gross at Definition Films in Sydney, where we will be editing; in their final cut suite as well as creating/outputting all of our batch converted pro res files for editorial, via Hecklers compressor droplets from our daily H.264 rushes.

We have managed to do most things right so far or at least it feels like we have done.  I must say I have been a little too quick to jump on the net and buy things that I believe we would need.  Like for instance I am now onto my 3^rd mattebox!  I started off by buying an original LOMO anamorphic mattebox from America…

 Not only did this first mattebox stink to high heaven of what could have easily have been 30 year old dog shit and toe jam, it also didn’t fit together at all.  So after about 4 beers and a packet of sandalwood incense, I decided that the box it came in was about as useful as the stinky mattebox that it contained.

Then came mattebox version 2…this time brand new and shiny with pretty finishing’s and lovely custom made pelican case.  However after about a day I realised that my massive 35mm Lomo lens didn’t have a chance in hell of fitting into the back of it’s retainer ring.

So out came the big guns…  I had to go and buy a second hand Arri MB14 from my old buddy Ken Rich in LA who had originally sold me the Lomo’s in the first place a few months earlier.

It was at about this point that Olli began to show minor signs of anxiety related illnesses like rashes and twitching. 

You see Olli had to somehow get a 16 x 9 image that had been squeezed horizontally by a ratio of 2:1  into the correct viewable aspect ratio of 1:2.40 on 3 monitors.  One for me which I would operate off, then one for himself which he would be checking critical focus with, and a final larger monitor for our Director Maia.

On top of all that Olli had to deal with 2 more obstacles:

When in normal viewing mode the Canon 5D mk 2 out puts a lovely 1080 HD image, however once you press record the camera can’t handle outputting so much resolution as well as recording in high definition so it reduces the outputted viewing image to a more manageable but smaller image of 420 pixels across.

Most monitors can’t handle this and simply display a much smaller image size, however some other more dedicated DSLR monitors like the “Small HD DP 6”  has an inbuilt automatic upres capability which kicks in as soon as you press the record button, so that you stay looking at the same image size that you had just set up your shot with.  For this reason Olli and I bought one of these Small HD monitors each.

So that part is all good and what ever but we still had many rivers to cross so that we could reach the port of “correct aspects on all monitors” during filming and rehearsals.

This may sound like a plug but the DP6 monitor really is awesome…  You see each of my lenses have a varying degree of vignetting on the Canon 5D sensor.  The 35mm is the worst see image: 

And the 100mm is the best with no vignetting at all. See image:

Because of this vignetting we had to figure out a way of cropping each lens so that we achieved the best possible results in the final product as we had already lost about 36% horizontal resolution due to the excessive 2:1 squeeze on a 16 x 9 image.

By shooting grid charts for each of my 4 lenses and then getting the guys at Heckler to come up with the best compressor droplet for each lens we would all be on the same page, from my monitor to the editors monitor we’d be seeing the same recorded/framed images. 

This is easy to say but how the hell would we be able to change the monitor to suit the lenses every time we changes lens???  Well it just so happens that the DP6 has 10 pre set settings available.  Thank god! 

Although it took a long time Olli simply calibrated my monitor to match the cropping and squeezing settings for each lens that Heckler had devised earlier that week.

Our first shoot day was yesterday, and everything was working perfectly.  We simply pressed 2 buttons and the field of view would change slightly in accordance with the lens, which is on the camera at the time.  “Pre set 1” being the 35mm anamorphic 2 is the 50mm, 3 is the 75mm, 4 is the 100mm and 5 is a setting we have for spherical lenses which just crops the 16 x 9 image to our shooting ratio of 1:2.40.

We have a 150-600 century zoom on set as well because I felt we’d want a longer lens than a 100mm, which has proven to be the right decision.  It won’t match perfectly but it was better to have it and not match than not have it.

Inner city stuff looks awesome on a really long lens, especially with the doubler attached giving us a 1200mm. We got the long zoom so that we could shoot the general public, or our actors amongst the public without them being aware of the camera.

The other issue Olli had was to be able to get a directors monitor that could handle the down conversion once we rolled the camera…  This was impossible we soon figured out however there was a little box called a “Blackmagic HDMI to SDI converter” which we have attached to the camera at all times now.  This box handles the down conversion buy up rezzing the images again.  This now allows our director to be able to view in the correct format.

Enough about monitoring… 

So our first pre shoot day was a couple of days ago.  If anyone thought that Canon 5D’s are light weight they should try holding onto my rig for a 10 minute scene…  I’m 31 years old now, I’m not exactly a perfect picture of health but I’m not a 2 pound weakling that has to run around in the shower to get wet either.

That camera weighs a tonne man!  With a 6x6 mattebox, 35mm lens, preston, 2 monitors, down converters and a counter weight at the back…she’s bloody heavy.  I’d say the same as an Arri BL with 1000’ mag and a reasonable size lens.